Union Comercio: Unluckiest Soccer Team in the World?

It takes a special talent by a coach or manager to find gallows humor in the face of losing. In the case of Peruvian soccer club Union Comercio the losses are piling up and doing so in sublimely absurd fashion.

Union coach Edgar Ospina says his team’s recent string of gaffe-filled play ought to earn them a place in the Guiness Book of Records, as reported by Reuters. The club is second-to-last in the standings, so the team’s struggles likely run deeper than the bad string of luck they’ve run into. Even so, for these plays to happen to the same club over a small span of time is remarkable.

“I don’t think anything like this has happened to any team in the world,” Ospina said. “We deserve to be in the Guinness Book of Records. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

We’ve compiled the video evidence. Ospina might have a point.

Gaffe No. 1: Keeper Juan Flores is completely lost, allows opponent to steal ball from him and totally embarrass him in the process, setting a tone.

Gaffe No. 2: Next we have Renzo Reaños’ own-goal, which needed its own sad trombone effect as it looped into the net. This play has already been documented on this site. It’s one of the worst own-goals in recent vintage, for those who keep track of this sort of thing. In Reaños’s defense, he’d thought play had stopped.

Gaffe No. 3: Finally another own goal, this time by Joaquin Lencinas. You can tell by his frustration how much these gaffes are wearing on the club’s psyche. In fairness, this play was a fairly typical own-goal and more the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Laugh or cry? If you’re Ospina you probably do a little from column a and a little from column b.